What are the present trends regarding legal BPO?

As reported in a recent Asian Wall Street Journal article, research firm Forrester Research found that U.S. and U.K. companies outsourced 12,000 legal jobs worldwide (primarily to India) and will increase this to 79,000 over the next ten years. Primary areas already outsourced included: legal and case law research, business agreements, intellectual property research, patent applications, due diligence reports, evidence and documents reviews, court records briefs and litigation support.

Law firms like Dallas litigation specialist Bickel & Brewster, which formed a subsidiary in India, and international San Francisco-based law firm Baker McKenzie, which formed a legal processing center in the Philippines, have already discovered that outsourcing helps their budgets cover more activities and enables their lawyers to become more productive. General Electric outsourced 400 legal jobs to India last year and Microsoft Corporation and Cisco Systems also use Indian lawyers and support staff to perform technical writing and research for patent applications.

For businesses and law firm clients, legal services outsourcing does not just generate cost savings, but can also make the management of legal work more efficient and effective - helping close deals faster, providing financial staying power in protracted litigation, contributing to convincing adversaries to drop or settle expensive law suits, etc.